


Memento

by aliquotscum



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, Journal 3, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 21:02:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7773277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliquotscum/pseuds/aliquotscum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Spoilers for Journal 3!] As the campfire dies down and a last night turns into a last morning, Mabel still has a few things to work through. The good news is she doesn't have to do it alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento

**Author's Note:**

> This might be even ramblier than my usual. But I'd been thinking some of these thoughts for a while and that little sendoff scene in the journal gave me a great excuse to tie them together, so here we are. Thanks for reading, if you do!

Hours later, when the gas can was empty and all the stuff in the fire had crumbled down to a pile of faceless non-triangular ash and they’d gone through every song Mabel knew, plus a few she made up on the spot, things quieted down a little. In the good sleepy relaxed way, not the “out of things to say” way. So she hugged herself inside the cocoon of her sweater and just enjoyed being warm and toasty for a while to the sound of cricket song and randomly popping sparks. Everything felt right, just then.

“Well, there's a couple of leftover marshmallows chilling here,” Soos was saying, eyeing the flames suspiciously while he went through his backpack. “But I don't really know if you wanna roast ‘em. They might get, like, infused with dark omens or nasty evil gunk from the smoke now.”

“Hah!” Grunkle Stan snatched the bag from him. “Joke's on you again, Eyeball. My insides’ve been coated in basically that since 1977. Hey Sixer, you want in on this?” He shook his stick at Grunkle Ford, who waved him off. “Yeah you do,” Stan decided. He speared two marshmallows on separate twigs and tossed the last one raw across the fire to Mabel. She caught it in her mouth like a seal, and he winked at her. “Little charred cult artifact residue never hurt anybody, right?”

“I’ve read several articles on demonic transference theory that suggest otherwise,” Grunkle Ford said, but he was smiling. He’d been doing a lot more of that lately.

“Wait.” Dipper looked up sleepily from the piece of bark he was doodling on. “What happened in 1977?”

Stan turned his stick carefully over the flames. “I'll tell you when I remember the rest of it and you're all at least 25.” He looked at Soos, who was waving the empty marshmallow bag around and making little _whoosh_ noises. “Maybe 30.”

Mabel snaked her arms back through her sleeves to point at her own eyes, then his. “I’m totally holding you to that, Grunkle Stan!”

“I know you are, sweat pea.”

“No, seriously, you’ll be sitting in your rocking chair thinking we totally forgot, and then--BAM! We’re flying in on our private jet and busting your door down and we expect some juicy, incriminating answers.”

“I’ll mark a calendar so we can keep track,” Grunkle Ford said with a yawn. He started cleaning his glasses, but shoved them back on and squinted up at the trees when he noticed there was enough light to make out the branches now. “Speaking of...goodness, what time is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Booooooooo!” The bundle of flannel at Mabel’s feet rustled, and Wendy rolled over from where she was curled up on the ground using the log for a pillow. The pretty red braid Mabel was working on slipped and fell across her face. She scowled through it. “You never ask what time it is on an overnight, dude! That’s like, camping rules 101. Way to blow the mystique.”

Soos frowned. “Is that a thing?”

“Definitely a thing,” Stan said, through a mouthful of marshmallow. He leaned over and punched Grunkle Ford in the shoulder.

“Ow--Stanley!” Ford turned to Wendy, still rubbing his arm. “Penance paid, I hope?”

Wendy stretched her arms high into the air. The dirt under her nails was as perfect as any manicure. “Well, actually my brothers would make you go through the Tunnel of Pain, but I’m the nice Corduroy so we’ll let it slide this time.”

“I think I saw a wrestling move with that name once,” Soos said.

“It’s basically the same, but with more elbows.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright. Fun’s fun but Poindexter’s right, some of you grimy louts really need your beauty sleep. And I think we’re just about done here anyway,” he added, poking the embers roughly with his stick. He rose to his feet with his patented old man groan, mussing up Dipper’s hair on the way. It must have been the cue everyone was waiting for, because they all started stirring too. “Soos, Wendy, grab that cooler and let’s go fill ‘er up. Kids, you stay here and make sure we don’t burn the forest down. Stanford, eat your cursed sugar goop.”

“I did eat a curse once,” Grunkle Ford muttered, as he reluctantly took the marshmallow stick Stan forced into his hand. He leaned on it like a wizard’s staff and trailed after the others. “They’re more savory than sweet.”

Mabel stayed put and watched them go. When they had disappeared through the trees and morning mist, she hauled herself up and crossed the fire to sit next to Dipper, who was still sketching. He smelled like sweat and campfire, but so did everyone else today. She let her head fall on his shoulder. “Boop.”

Dipper leaned into her. “Boop to you, too.”

She snuggled closer and watched him work. The blackened piece of kindling he’d nudged out of the fire earlier wasn’t exactly artist-grade charcoal, but it was soft and crumbly enough to leave clear marks on the birch strip spread out in his lap. (And on his hands, and his forearm, and somehow his _ear_ …) Her eyes flicked over the little portraits of everyone, then to the pine tree he was etching out next to them. “That looks really good,” she said.

“Yeah? I’m just messing around.” He straightened a little and thumbed at his nose. “It is pretty fun, though.”

Mabel did her best not to laugh at the perfect black smudge on his face. “Sure looks like it!” She wrapped both her arms around one of his. “Oh, and happy birthday,” she told him. “Technically.”

Dipper’s hand skittered to a halt. “Oh man, yeah.” He turned to face her. “I almost forgot with all the jacked-up time stuff. It’s weird, right?” His face scrunched up suddenly and he rubbed the back of his neck, leaving another, even bigger smear. “Hey, are we okay using ‘weird’ again? Is it too soon? I feel like maybe it’s too soon.”

Mabel squeezed his arm. “Nah. It’s definitely weird.”

She might have said something else, but by then Soos and Wendy were marching back, swinging a cooler full of lake water between them. Mabel and Dipper scrambled out of the way just in time before they sloshed most of it out over the fire with a ragged cheer, which only turned into a mild group coughing party at the hissing smoke that rose from the impact. Stan and Ford caught up after and directed the four of them in pouring the rest out over any leftover flames they spotted.

They stayed and watched until every spark was soaked and the ashes were cool enough for Stan to walk across. Which he did, looking thrilled about it. Grunkle Ford protested a little before letting himself be pulled on after him, but Mabel noticed how he dug his heel in at the end. Obviously that meant Wendy had to go too, and obviously she grabbed Mabel and Dipper with her, and between the three of them they stomped the pile down almost flat. Soos held out the longest, too nervous to get close and warning them about bad juju, dawgs. It took all of them cheering to get him to tiptoe across, and even then he turned faintly green.

“Well,” Stan said when they were done, looking down at the soggy gray mess of footprints in the fire ring. “Good effing riddance.”

“Stanley.”

“What? Frogging. What’d you think it stood for?”

Wendy raised a hand. “Okay, petition to take a quick dunk before we walk back? I feel and smell like death, and not in the cool indie metal way.”

She made a sound argument. They did one last quick round-up to clean the campsite before heading back to the lake. Mabel told them to go ahead without her because she needed to find her headband. Which was true, until she found it a minute later, and then she sat and twisted it in her hands while she watched the last little wisps of steam curling out of the pit.

Five minutes ago it was still a real fire. An hour ago they were all still sitting here, telling stories, and everything was perfect. But now the sun was almost out, and the early birds and late bats were smacking into each other trying to get where they needed to be, and she was the kind of tired that made your eyeballs hurt and every move feel like wading through extra chunky soup even when everything else was moving so, so fast. So that was it. Morning. Happy birthday.

_Summer can last as long as you want it to!_

Happy packing day.

Something glimmered in the ashes. Mabel hesitated, then reached a hand out.

 

When she stepped out of the trees and into the open, everybody else was already at the water. Soos crouched by the shore, scrubbing his sneakers diligently in the water and chatting back and forth with Wendy, who was wading nearby with her jeans rolled to her knees and her already-wet hair piled at the back of her neck. Dipper stood on the dock between Stan and Ford, taking turns skipping stones with them while they gave him pointers in between bits of regular old man conversation. Mabel caught part of it as she walked up behind them on the creaky old wood.

“--Yeah, he moved up here years back, works over in the bait shop these days. Decent kid, far as I know. Never talked about his old man much, but he doesn’t get all prissy about the fishing limit.”

“Fascinating! I suppose I should introduce myself at some point.”

“I said he’s decent, not a saint. Ten bucks says he clocks you first thing. Come on, Dip, really throw some muscle into it!”

“Focus on control,” Grunkle Ford said. “Map out the motion in your wrist, and follow through.”

Dipper nodded at both of them and drew his arm back. “Okay, okay, I think I got this. Hold on!”

Mabel watched the three of them watch the rock sail majestically through the air. She watched them watch it plunge straight into the water and sink majestically, too. Grunkle Ford cleared his throat importantly. “Trial and error, my boy.”

“Best two of three,” Grunkle Stan said. “That lake won’t know what hit it.”

“Well. A rock, obviously.”

“Um, hey!” Mabel called. They turned to her, and she let them see what she was carrying. “This one didn’t burn.”

It was a long silvery chain, with _his_ face hanging from it in some darker metal that would probably turn your skin green if you looked at it too hard. The eye in the middle was made of cut stone, yellow once but smoked over so much it had lost most of its shine. The chain dangled from Mabel’s outstretched fingers so the pendant spun freely, trying to catch the light. It had been cool enough to touch when she pulled it from the ashes, but she still tried not to.

Stan grimaced at it. “Yeesh. Too bad. If anything in that pile deserved to go up in flames, it’s this eyesore.”

“Now, now, Stanley,” Grunkle Ford chided, “they’re all equally horrible.” He bent over and pulled the chain forward with one finger for a closer look. “I forgot about this one. Must have been wrapped up with some of the other little knickknacks. I’ll have to melt it down like that statue we turned into new rims for the golf cart.”

“I still think that’s a bad move, by the way,” Stan complained. “Tourists come here to see real fake mysteries, not go hot-roddin’ around like some Vegas golf showgirl.”

“Stanley, I’ve seen the accessories you wear, so I hardly think you’re in a position to--”

“Mabel?”

It was all Dipper had to say to cut their uncles off. He’d been searching Mabel’s face carefully, still tossing a stone back and forth between his hands. Mabel hated how worried he looked, so she focused on the pendant instead. She hated that she knew he was about to ask if she was okay, so she laughed before he could start and twirled the chain around so the thing landed heavily in her palm. It was still warm after all. “I’m fine,” she said brightly. “It’s just. It’s kind of funny, right? That this is all that’s left?” The eye was set so it spun inside the metal, too. Mabel flipped it around a few times with her thumb, but it was just as dull on both sides. “Summer’s really over after this.”

She trailed off when she saw their faces. Dipper’s had gone from Buttercup to Hot Magenta on the Twin Worry scale. Ford’s mouth and eyes went tight, the way they had his first week here when she’d asked if he was happy to be back. Stan just looked really tired for a second. Then he was the first to move.

“Hey hey, none of that.” He scooped Mabel up in his arms and spun her around, bouncing her a little each step as he carried her to the edge of the dock. “Don’t you let some pyramid creep have any say about what’s done or not. We did just fine all summer without him stinking up the place, right?”

Mabel buried her face in his suit. “Right.”

“So there you go! He doesn’t get the last word in anything.” Stan knocked his head against hers gently. “C’mon, kiddo. What d’ya say, you wanna throw it?”

Mabel shrugged.

“Want me to throw you?”

“...Yeah.”

She was holding her nose when she landed, but she still got a mouthful of lake water from laughing.

Everything was softer underwater. Her skin, her tangled hair, the sun dancing on the surface overhead. Even the shouting and laughter from above and the hollow _thoom_ when Dipper got tossed in after her, vestless, a few seconds later. He spun himself around and caught her eye, looking like he wanted to say something, but Mabel shook her head and pointed down, so he swam after her into the fuzzy green murk.

They reached the lakebed together, closer to the middle in the deeper part. Mabel dug out a hole with her hand, then dropped the pendant in and smeared it back over with mud. Dipper found a big rock to lay on top of it. She made a frowny face with a few smaller ones, to warn the fish away. When they kicked off from the bottom and left a cloud of billowing silt behind them, they were holding hands.

Dipper broke the surface just before her and shook his head like a wet dog. Some of the grime had washed off his face, but not all of it, so he was still a funny pinkish-gray in a few places. “Better?” he asked, when they’d both caught their breath.

“Better,” Mabel said. She realized she meant it.

Stan had joined Soos and Wendy while they were under, and the three were waving at them both, waist-deep in the water a little ways off. They waved back. Mabel smiled at Dipper, a really real smile this time, and gestured over her shoulder apologetically. He nodded and swam for the others without her, for now. She turned and headed for the dock.

The thing was, swimming submerged in a big puffy sweater was pretty soothing, but getting out of the water again in one was like drowning in artsy acrylic performance piece slow-mo. She had to take a deep breath and dive back under to wrestle her way out of the thing, then drag it behind her as she paddled the last few yards in her less glittery but way more aerodynamic T-shirt.

Grunkle Ford was sitting near the edge waiting for her, next to Stan’s jacket and Dipper’s vest folded neatly on top of each other. He settled back, like he’d been ready to jump in after her just in case. “You made it!”

The sweater hit the deck with a defeated squelch when Mabel tossed it up, dripping at least a gallon’s worth of lake back to where it belonged. She coughed up a piece of kelp grimly. “It thought it could take me down with it, but I know all its tricks. I've been in this game since before it got its first row of stitches.”

“Establishing dominance, as it were,” Grunkle Ford nodded. He pressed on the sleeves to help wring them out a little. “And the artifact?”

“Left it at the bottom,” Mabel said, as casually as she could. She tipped her head back into the water to get the hair out of her face, then a couple more times for the swirly mermaid feeling. “Are you sure it's okay down there, though? What if a lake monster or something finds it and gets all culty?”

Grunkle Ford frowned past her, deep into the water. “The lake monsters know better.”

“I guess. Hey, don't you want to swim too?”

Ford hesitated. “Maybe later,” he said. It was a _no_ -maybe, and it sounded a little embarrassed for some reason, but he came back from wherever he was drifting to smile at her. She crossed her arms over the planks and hung out next to him for a bit, enjoying the sunrise. It was pink and orange today. That helped. He seemed to try out and reject a couple of things to say while she bobbed lazily in the water. “We don’t have to talk about it if you'd rather not,” he finally said. “Any of it. But I want you to know I’m proud of you. Endings aren’t easy.”

The water wasn’t that cold, but she felt it down to her bones. “No kidding,” Mabel practically shouted. She rubbed a hand into her eye to chase some grit out of it. “Ugh! I don’t know why I got all weird and sappy like that. Just tired, probably. I mean, it's not like we're not gonna be together like this again, right?”

“Like this?” Ford raised his eyebrows. “Oh no, I'd say that's impossible.”

Mabel splashed her ankles thoughtfully. “I think pep talks meant something different when you were a kid.”

Grunkle Ford still laughed like he was surprised he remembered how. They’d have to work on that. “Mabel, I spent a long time traveling, with a lot of different people--”

“You were in the circus?”

“No! Well, briefly. But that's not my point. My point is…” He leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him, and for a second Mabel saw Dipper a million years from now. “If there's one thing I've learned out there, it's that no group is ever the same twice. The next time they meet there will always be someone new, or missing, or changed.” He scratched his chin. “Sometimes cloned. I don't think this dimension is quite there yet.”

Mabel buried her chin in her arms. “That's annoying.”

Grunkle Ford shrugged. “We’ve only met recently. Do you think you're the same now as you were before this summer?” He looked across the water, where Soos and Wendy had thrown Dipper in the empty cooler and were pushing him around to lay siege to the Isle of Stancatraz. “I know I'm not.”

“Fair enough,” Mabel said. She’d been holding still for too long, and some minnows were giving her legs little nibbly fish kisses. She treaded water to spook them away. “Nobody missing next time, though,” she warned.

“Nobody missing,” Grunkle Ford agreed.

“Soos can bring Melody, and you guys can bring any cool narwhal friends you make on your pirate trip. And maybe Wendy will have a whole new coolness level or really buff lumberjack arms by then.”

“You'll be taller!” he offered.

“Taller than Dipper, if I have anything to say about it.”

Stan hollered out and interrupted them both. “Mabel, sweetie, I'm under attack! Requesting backup pronto!”

“Coming!” Mabel called. She turned to her other uncle one more time. “Thanks, Grunkle Ford. Can you watch my sweater? It tried to kill me down there, but it’s got a good heart.”

“I don’t see how it couldn’t,” he said, “given who made it. Carry on.”

Mabel kicked back into the water with her best dolphin flip. As she swam, she put her inner scrapbook to work and tried to memorize every detail of the waves lapping her face, the echo of Stan’s voice through the valley calling for help as dramatically as possible, the serene achy weight of her arms pushing her forward to rescue him with her expert splashing tactics. It wasn’t much, after an entire summer. Just something worth keeping.


End file.
